systemPipeR 2.12.0
This workflow template is for analyzing single cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) data. It is provided by
systemPipeRdata,
a companion package to systemPipeR (H Backman and Girke 2016).
The content of this workflow steps are provided by this Seurat Tutorial.
Similar to other systemPipeR
workflow templates, a single command generates
the necessary working environment. This includes the expected directory
structure for executing systemPipeR
workflows and parameter files for running
command-line (CL) software utilized in specific analysis steps. For learning
and testing purposes, a small sample (toy) data set is also included (mainly
FASTQ and reference genome files). This enables users to seamlessly run the
numerous analysis steps of this workflow from start to finish without the
requirement of providing custom data. After testing the workflow, users have
the flexibility to employ the template as is with their own data or modify it
to suit their specific needs. For more comprehensive information on designing
and executing workflows, users want to refer to the main vignettes of
systemPipeR
and
systemPipeRdata.
The Rmd
file (SPscrna.Rmd
) associated with this vignette serves a dual purpose. It acts
both as a template for executing the workflow and as a template for generating
a reproducible scientific analysis report. Thus, users want to customize the text
(and/or code) of this vignette to describe their experimental design and
analysis results. This typically involves deleting the instructions how to work
with this workflow, and customizing the text describing experimental designs,
other metadata and analysis results.
Typically, the user wants to describe here the sources and versions of the
reference genome sequence along with the corresponding annotations. The standard
directory structure of systemPipeR
(see here),
expects the input data in a subdirectory named data
and all results will be written to a separate results
directory. The Rmd source file
for executing the workflow and rendering its report (here SPscrna.Rmd
) is
expected to be located in the parent directory.
In this template, a toy single cell dataset is preprocessed/filtered by 10X. Samples taken from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), about 3000 cells.
This dataset will be downloaded on-the-fly as one of the workflow steps in this template.
Users can also manually download the dataset
and unzip into the data
directory.
To use their own scRNA-Seq and reference genome data, users want to move or link the
data to the designated data
directory and execute the workflow from the parent directory
using their customized Rmd
file. Beginning with this template, users should delete the provided test
data and move or link their custom data to the designated locations.
Alternatively, users can create an environment skeleton (named new
here) or
build one from scratch.
The default analysis steps included in this scRNA-Seq workflow template are listed below. Users can modify the existing steps, add new ones or remove steps as needed.
Default analysis steps
The environment for this scRNA-Seq workflow is auto-generated below with the
genWorkenvir
function (selected under workflow="scrnaseq"
).
The name of the
resulting workflow directory can be specified under the mydirname
argument.
The default NULL
uses the name of the chosen workflow. An error is issued if
a directory of the same name and path exists already. After this, the user’s R
session needs to be directed into the resulting SPscrna
directory (here with
setwd
).
library(systemPipeRdata)
genWorkenvir(workflow = "SPscrna", mydirname = "SPscrna")
setwd("SPscrna")
targets
fileTypically for systemPipeR workflows, there is a targets
file defines the input files (e.g. FASTQ or BAM) and sample
information that will be called in command-line tools. However, this workflow does not require a targets file.
For users who are interested in learning more about targets file,
here
is a detailed description of the structure and utility of targets
files.
After a workflow environment has been created with the above genWorkenvir
function call and the corresponding R session directed into the resulting directory (here SPscrna
),
the SPRproject
function is used to initialize a new workflow project instance. The latter
creates an empty SAL
workflow container (below sal
) and at the same time a
linked project log directory (default name .SPRproject
) that acts as a
flat-file database of a workflow. Additional details about this process and
the SAL workflow control class are provided in systemPipeR's
main vignette
here
and here.
Next, the importWF
function imports all the workflow steps outlined in the
source Rmd file of this vignette (here SPscrna.Rmd
) into the SAL
workflow container.
An overview of the workflow steps and their status information can be returned
at any stage of the loading or run process by typing sal
.
library(systemPipeR)
sal <- SPRproject()
sal <- importWF(sal, file_path = "SPscrna.Rmd", verbose = FALSE)
sal
After loading the workflow into sal
, it can be executed from start to finish
(or partially) with the runWF
command. Running the workflow will only be
possible if all dependent CL software is installed on a user’s system. Their
names and availability on a system can be listed with listCmdTools(sal, check_path=TRUE)
. For more information about the runWF
command, refer to the
help file and the corresponding section in the main vignette
here.
Running workflows in parallel mode on computer clusters is a straightforward
process in systemPipeR
. Users can simply append the resource parameters (such
as the number of CPUs) for a cluster run to the sal
object after importing
the workflow steps with importWF
using the addResources
function. More
information about parallelization can be found in the corresponding section at
the end of this vignette here and in the main vignette
here.
sal <- runWF(sal)
Workflows can be visualized as topology graphs using the plotWF
function.
plotWF(sal)
Scientific and technical reports can be generated with the renderReport
and
renderLogs
functions, respectively. Scientific reports can also be generated
with the render
function of the rmarkdown
package. The technical reports are
based on log information that systemPipeR
collects during workflow runs.
# Scientific report
sal <- renderReport(sal)
rmarkdown::render("SPscrna.Rmd", clean = TRUE, output_format = "BiocStyle::html_document")
# Technical (log) report
sal <- renderLogs(sal)
The statusWF
function returns a status summary for each step in a SAL
workflow instance.
statusWF(sal)
The data analysis steps of this workflow are defined by the following workflow code chunks.
They can be loaded into SAL
interactively, by executing the code of each step in the
R console, or all at once with the importWF
function used under the Quick start section.
R and CL workflow steps are declared in the code chunks of Rmd
files with the
LineWise
and SYSargsList
functions, respectively, and then added to the SAL
workflow
container with appendStep<-
. Their syntax and usage is described
here.
The first step loads the required packages.
cat(crayon::blue$bold("To use this workflow, following R packages are expected:\n"))
cat(c("'Seurat", "ggplot2", "ggpubr", "patchwork", "dplyr", "tibble",
"readr'\n"), sep = "', '")
### pre-end
appendStep(sal) <- LineWise(code = {
library(systemPipeR)
library(Seurat)
library(dplyr)
library(ggplot2)
library(ggpubr)
library(patchwork)
}, step_name = "load_packages")
In this example, the single cell data is preprocessed/filtered 10x data from a healthy donor. Samples taken from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), about 3000 cells.
Dataset can be downloaded with this link: https://cf.10xgenomics.com/samples/cell/pbmc3k/pbmc3k_filtered_gene_bc_matrices.tar.gz
If the link is not working, visit 10x website for updated links.
For your real data, please preprocess and put the dataset inside data
directory
appendStep(sal) <- LineWise(code = {
# unzip the data
untar("data/pbmc3k_filtered_gene_bc_matrices.tar.gz", exdir = "data")
# load data
pbmc.data <- Read10X(data.dir = "data/filtered_gene_bc_matrices/hg19/")
# Use dim to see the size of dataset, example data has
# 2700 cells x 32738 genes
dim(pbmc.data)
}, step_name = "load_data", dependency = "load_packages")
We can plot to see how many cells have good expressions.
appendStep(sal) <- LineWise(code = {
at_least_one <- apply(pbmc.data, 2, function(x) sum(x > 0))
count_p1 <- tibble::as_tibble(at_least_one) %>%
ggplot() + geom_histogram(aes(x = value), binwidth = floor(nrow(pbmc.data)/400),
fill = "#6b97c2", color = "white") + theme_pubr(16) +
scale_y_continuous(expand = c(0, 0)) + scale_x_continuous(expand = c(0,
0)) + labs(title = "Distribution of detected genes",
x = "Genes with at least one tag")
count_p2 <- tibble::as_tibble(MatrixGenerics::colSums(pbmc.data)) %>%
ggplot() + geom_histogram(aes(x = value), bins = floor(ncol(pbmc.data)/50),
fill = "#6b97c2", color = "white") + theme_pubr(16) +
scale_y_continuous(expand = c(0, 0)) + scale_x_continuous(expand = c(0,
0)) + labs(title = "Expression sum per cell", x = "Sum expression")
png("results/count_plots.png", 1000, 700)
count_p1 + count_p2 + patchwork::plot_annotation(tag_levels = "A")
dev.off()
}, step_name = "count_plot", dependency = "load_data")
appendStep(sal) <- LineWise(code = {
sce <- CreateSeuratObject(counts = pbmc.data, project = "pbmc3k",
min.cells = 3, min.features = 200)
# calculate mitochondria gene ratio
sce[["percent.mt"]] <- PercentageFeatureSet(sce, pattern = "^MT-")
}, step_name = "create_seurat", dependency = "load_data")
Filters applied here are:
min.cells = 3
: for a single gene, it must be presented in at least 3 cells.min.features = 200
: for any cell, it must at least have 200 genes with readable gene counts.In your real data, you may want to adjust the filters for different projects.
Some indicators are important to show the quality of the cell batch, for example
appendStep(sal) <- LineWise(code = {
png("results/qc1.png", 700, 700)
VlnPlot(sce, features = c("nFeature_RNA", "nCount_RNA", "percent.mt"),
ncol = 3)
dev.off()
qc_p1 <- FeatureScatter(sce, feature1 = "nCount_RNA", feature2 = "percent.mt")
qc_p2 <- FeatureScatter(sce, feature1 = "nCount_RNA", feature2 = "nFeature_RNA")
png("results/qc2.png", 700, 450)
qc_p1 + qc_p2 + patchwork::plot_annotation(tag_levels = "A")
dev.off()
}, step_name = "qc_seurat", dependency = "create_seurat")
Extreme numbers, outlines are likely low quality sequencing/bad cells.
As shown on the figure above, A is the ratio of percent mt vs. N count. Normally, no matter how many counts you can find from a cell, the percent mt gene ratio should always be stable. For cells with extremely high mt ratios, they should be removed. Looking at x-axis, for a single cell, the N counts should also be inside a reasonable range. Too low of counts indicates the cell gel bead is empty during barcoding. Too high of counts indicates a single gel bead had more than one cell during barcoding. Either these cases are bad, and cells of these should be removed.
B is N genes per cell vs. N counts per cell. Normally, if as the N counts increases, the N genes also increases. All cells should be connected to approximately one line. If you see more than one line, there may be problem with the sequencing, or cells are not from the same batch.
appendStep(sal) <- LineWise(code = {
# Based on the QC plots, please change the settings
# accordingly
sce <- subset(sce, subset = nFeature_RNA > 200 & nFeature_RNA <
2500 & nCount_RNA < 10000 & percent.mt <= 5)
}, step_name = "filter_cells", dependency = "create_seurat")
For RNAseq data, usually log transformation and TPM is performed. For scRNA, the normalization is
\[ Normalized\ count\ for\ a\ gene\ in\ a\ cell\ =log1p(\frac{Feature\ counts}{Total\ counts\ in\ a\ cell})\\ where\ log1p\ is\ ln(n+1) \]
appendStep(sal) <- LineWise(code = {
# scale.factor = 10000 is a convenient number for
# plotting, so the normalized counts is ranged between
# 0.xx to 10.
sce <- NormalizeData(sce, normalization.method = "LogNormalize",
scale.factor = 10000)
# compare counts before and after
count_p_norm <- tibble::as_tibble(MatrixGenerics::colSums(sce$RNA@layers$data)) %>%
ggplot() + geom_histogram(aes(x = value), bins = floor(ncol(pbmc.data)/50),
fill = "#6b97c2", color = "white") + theme_pubr(16) +
scale_y_continuous(expand = c(0, 0)) + scale_x_continuous(expand = c(0,
0)) + labs(title = "Total expression after normalization",
x = "Sum expression")
png("results/normalize_count_compare.png", 1000, 700)
count_p2 + count_p_norm + patchwork::plot_annotation(tag_levels = "A")
dev.off()
}, step_name = "normalize", dependency = "filter_cells")
After the normalization, expression is close to a normal distribution.
Some genes are highly variable among cells. These genes are the key for the research. Here, some top-ranked variable genes are calculated and will be used for downstream analysis.
appendStep(sal) <- LineWise(code = {
# 2000 is default
sce <- FindVariableFeatures(sce, selection.method = "vst",
nfeatures = 2000)
# top 10 variable genes
top10_var <- head(VariableFeatures(sce), 10)
# plot the top 2000 variable genes and mark top 10
png("results/variable_genes.png", 700, 600)
VariableFeaturePlot(sce) %>%
LabelPoints(points = top10_var, repel = TRUE) + theme_pubr(16)
dev.off()
}, step_name = "find_var_genes", dependency = "normalize")
To make the visualization within a reasonable range, scaling is performed. This changes the expression data points to be centered at 0 with standard deviation of 1.
appendStep(sal) <- LineWise(code = {
sce <- ScaleData(sce, features = rownames(sce))
}, step_name = "scaling", dependency = "find_var_genes")
appendStep(sal) <- LineWise(code = {
# only use the top 2000 genes, first 50 PCs (default)
sce <- RunPCA(sce, features = VariableFeatures(object = sce),
npcs = 50)
# we can use following command to see first 5 genes in
# each PC
print(sce$pca, dims = 1:5, nfeatures = 5)
}, step_name = "pca", dependency = "scaling")
appendStep(sal) <- LineWise(code = {
# plot PCA overview
png("results/pca_overview.png", 500, 500)
DimPlot(sce, reduction = "pca")
dev.off()
# plot top contributed genes in PC 1 and 2
png("results/pca_loadings.png", 700, 550)
VizDimLoadings(sce, dims = 1:2, reduction = "pca")
dev.off()
# we can also use heatmap to show top genes in
# different PCs
png("results/pca_heatmap.png", 700, 700)
DimHeatmap(sce, dims = 1:6, cells = ncol(sce)/5, balanced = TRUE,
slot = "scale.data")
dev.off()
}, step_name = "pca_plots", dependency = "pca")
After PCA, the dimension has reduced from tens of thousands (features) to 50. Before, we do the clustering, we can further reduced the PCs to only a few important ones, so the computation work can be easier. How to choose the best number of PCs is hard to decide. Here, the JackStraw plot and Elbow plot can be good ways to help us make the decision.
appendStep(sal) <- LineWise(code = {
# for demo purposes, only a few replicates are used to
# speed up the calculation in your real data, use
# larger number like 100, etc.
sce <- JackStraw(sce, num.replicate = 30)
sce <- ScoreJackStraw(sce, dims = 1:20)
png("results/jackstraw.png", 660, 750)
JackStrawPlot(sce, dims = 1:20)
dev.off()
png("results/elbow.png", 500, 500)
ElbowPlot(sce)
dev.off()
}, step_name = "choose_pcs", dependency = "pca")
There is a gap of values between PCs 1-6 and other PCs. Therefore PCs 1-6 are the most important. One could also include PCs 7-13 since they have \(p\leq0.05\). One would need to adjust the PC choice based on different datasets.
The Elbow plot also shows there is turning point around PC 7-8. All other following PCs did not change too much.
It seems we should choose PC 6 or 7 as the cutoff point based on plots above. However, Seurat documents recommend to combine methods above with GSEA. Some cell populations may relate to genes in later PCs, e.g. dendritic cell and NK aficionados are linked to PCs 12, 13. Therefore, if your computational resources allow, it would be good to include a few more PCs.
The Seurat documents recommend to repeat with 10, 15 or PCs. However, in our experiences, the results did not change significantly.
In the downstream analysis, this template choose 10 PCs.
Seurat uses graph-based methods like KNN to find the clusters.
appendStep(sal) <- LineWise(code = {
sce <- FindNeighbors(sce, dims = 1:10)
# resolution 0.4-1.2 good for 3000 cells, if you have
# more cells, increase the number will give you more
# clusters
sce <- FindClusters(sce, resolution = 0.5)
}, step_name = "find_clusters", dependency = "pca")
appendStep(sal) <- LineWise(code = {
sce <- RunUMAP(sce, dims = 1:20)
p_umap <- DimPlot(sce, reduction = "umap", label = TRUE)
sce <- RunTSNE(sce, dims = 1:20)
p_tsne <- DimPlot(sce, reduction = "tsne", label = TRUE)
png("results/plot_clusters.png", 1000, 570)
p_umap + p_tsne
dev.off()
}, step_name = "plot_cluster", dependency = "find_clusters")
Find genes that represent different clusters.
appendStep(sal) <- LineWise(code = {
# find markers for every cluster compared to all
# remaining cells, report only the positive ones
sce.markers <- FindAllMarkers(sce, only.pos = TRUE, min.pct = 0.25,
logfc.threshold = 0.25)
sce.markers %>%
group_by(cluster) %>%
top_n(n = 2, wt = avg_log2FC)
}, step_name = "find_markers", dependency = "find_clusters")
appendStep(sal) <- LineWise(code = {
png("results/vlnplot.png", 600, 600)
VlnPlot(sce, features = c("MS4A1", "CD79A"))
dev.off()
png("results/marker_features.png", 700, 500)
FeaturePlot(sce, features = c("MS4A1", "GNLY", "CD3E", "CD14"))
dev.off()
# plot top 10 DEG genes in each cluster as a heatmap
top10_markers <- sce.markers %>%
group_by(cluster) %>%
top_n(n = 10, wt = avg_log2FC)
png("results/marker_heatmap.png", 1100, 700)
DoHeatmap(sce, features = top10_markers$gene) + NoLegend()
dev.off()
}, step_name = "plot_markers", dependency = "find_markers")
There are a few ways one can classify different clusters into different cell types.
The best way is you know what are the markers for targeting cell types.
CellMarker(http://biocc.hrbmu.edu.cn/CellMarker/) is a great source to find
markers of different cell types. If you do not know the markers, use singleR
package may be helpful. This package automatically classify clusters into cell
types. However, the accuracy is not promised.
For example, if we know the markers of different cell types as following:
Cluster | Markers | Cell Type |
---|---|---|
0 | IL7R, CCR7 | Naive CD4+ T |
1 | CD14, LYZ | CD14+ Mono |
2 | IL7R, S100A4 | Memory CD4+ |
3 | MS4A1 | B |
4 | CD8A | CD8+ T |
5 | FCGR3A, MS4A7 | FCGR3A+ Mono |
6 | GNLY, NKG7 | NK |
7 | FCER1A, CST3 | DC |
8 | PPBP | Platelet |
appendStep(sal) <- LineWise(code = {
new.cluster.ids <- c("Naive CD4 T", "CD14+ Mono", "Memory CD4 T",
"B", "CD8 T", "FCGR3A+ Mono", "NK", "DC", "Platelet")
names(new.cluster.ids) <- levels(sce)
sce <- RenameIdents(sce, new.cluster.ids)
png("results/marker_labels.png", 700, 700)
DimPlot(sce, reduction = "umap", label = TRUE, pt.size = 0.5) +
NoLegend()
dev.off()
}, step_name = "label_cell_type", dependency = c("plot_cluster",
"find_markers"))
appendStep(sal) <- LineWise(code = {
sessionInfo()
}, step_name = "wf_session", dependency = "label_cell_type")
To run the workflow, use runWF
function. It executes all the steps store in
the workflow container. The execution will be on a single machine without
submitting to a queuing system of a computer cluster.
sal <- runWF(sal, run_step = "mandatory") # remove `run_step` to run all steps to include optional steps
To check command-line tools used in this workflow, use listCmdTools
, and use listCmdModules
to check if you have a modular system.
The following code will print out tools required in your custom SPR project in the report. In case you are running the workflow for the first time and do not have a project yet, or you just want to browser this workflow, following code displays the tools required by default.
if (file.exists(file.path(".SPRproject", "SYSargsList.yml"))) {
local({
sal <- systemPipeR::SPRproject(resume = TRUE)
systemPipeR::listCmdTools(sal)
systemPipeR::listCmdModules(sal)
})
} else {
cat(crayon::blue$bold("Tools and modules required by this workflow are:\n"))
cat(c("NA"), sep = "\n")
}
## Tools and modules required by this workflow are:
## NA
This is the session information for rendering this report. To access the session information
of workflow running, check HTML report of renderLogs
.
sessionInfo()
## R version 4.4.1 (2024-06-14)
## Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
## Running under: Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS
##
## Matrix products: default
## BLAS: /home/biocbuild/bbs-3.20-bioc/R/lib/libRblas.so
## LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lapack/liblapack.so.3.12.0
##
## locale:
## [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 LC_NUMERIC=C
## [3] LC_TIME=en_GB LC_COLLATE=C
## [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
## [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8 LC_NAME=C
## [9] LC_ADDRESS=C LC_TELEPHONE=C
## [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
##
## time zone: America/New_York
## tzcode source: system (glibc)
##
## attached base packages:
## [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets
## [6] methods base
##
## other attached packages:
## [1] BiocStyle_2.34.0
##
## loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
## [1] digest_0.6.37 R6_2.5.1
## [3] codetools_0.2-20 bookdown_0.41
## [5] fastmap_1.2.0 xfun_0.48
## [7] cachem_1.1.0 knitr_1.48
## [9] htmltools_0.5.8.1 rmarkdown_2.28
## [11] lifecycle_1.0.4 cli_3.6.3
## [13] sass_0.4.9 jquerylib_0.1.4
## [15] compiler_4.4.1 highr_0.11
## [17] tools_4.4.1 evaluate_1.0.1
## [19] bslib_0.8.0 yaml_2.3.10
## [21] formatR_1.14 BiocManager_1.30.25
## [23] crayon_1.5.3 jsonlite_1.8.9
## [25] rlang_1.1.4
H Backman, Tyler W, and Thomas Girke. 2016. “systemPipeR: NGS workflow and report generation environment.” BMC Bioinformatics 17 (1): 388. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-016-1241-0.